Saving the Pieces

Stewarding Springs and the Living Tapestry of the Land

Greetings all, and I hope this finds you well and fine fettle in this lovely summer.

I returned to a spring on Friday near Williams, Arizona, at which we (SSI) coordinated a restoration project in 2023. Over three weekends that autumn, the US Forest Service, SSI, and volunteers from the Hopi Tribe, WildArizona, Grand Canyon Trust, and the Arizona Elk Society assembled and hauled out donated bags of cement, steel rail pipe fencing, a jack hammer, a generator, and mixing buckets. We fenced the source area around Big Spring to protect it from livestock grazing. These spring sources are hotspots of ecological interactivity and cultural sensitivity, and so are the focus of restoration.

Calvin (our SSI summer intern) and I hiked out to the spring last Friday to monitor the restoration work. As we were measuring flow, I looked up and saw a sea of white-in-wool descending the slope and approaching the spring. The quiet sound of their jingling bells and ovine murmuring filled the still forest meadow. We had a nice conversation in Spanish with the Basque shepherd, talking about how he handled his flock of 2000, and we played with his very smart puppy sheepdog-in-training. The flock had plenty of water just downstream from the fenced area, and after an hour, the flock slowly flowed up the west ridge and out of sight, leaving us to our monitoring activities.

The fencing we installed with partial support from our generous SSI donors now protects this biologically hyper-active spring. During our recent monitoring trip, the springs was alive with native vegetation and butterflies, the noise of pollinators, including many native bees, as well as four species of predatory robber flies. Nearly all of this intense biological activity is the result of the fencing. Photos from the site prior to restoration and from our site visit last Friday are below.

Before (left) and after fencing (right).

If you'd like to support springs restoration, consider upgrading to a paid Substack subscription or making a one-time donation to SSI.

So many thanks to the friends of SSI! We are planning a publication on the importance of, in Aldo Leopold's words, "saving the pieces" - conserving these small hotspots of life that are so important to the well-being of the landscapes, cultures, and socio-economics around them. In the meantime, you might be interested in our new free-online book on the conservation status of the world's springs. Check out this short video on the Big Springs restoration project:

Also, here is a link to another springs restoration project we did with the Forest Service, the Hopi Tribe, and Grand Canyon Trust a few years ago:

Thanks a million to each of you for your love and support, and best wishes to all.